Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

‘I wondered all night: did Lord Subramanya mix things up? Give one boy the talent and the other the desire? But no, such things don’t happen to those who have trusted God, Radha. You will be selected today.’

With a kick of his legs, Radha rose from the bed.

From a drawer in his room, he took out a plastic envelope, placed it on his table, and withdrew a sacred cricket glove. He raised it to his face, touching it to his right eye, and then to his left.

At the Subramanya temple, the doors were opening for the morning, and it took a few minutes for the priest to chant the necessary Sanskrit and circle the dark image with the sacred fire, the aarthi. Because everyone in the neighbourhood knew it was Selection Day, the priest revived a South Indian tradition; raising a silver crown, God’s own crown, he placed it three times on the cricketer’s head. The third time it touched his skull, Radha had the hallucination that the God of Cricket, Subramanya, was standing before him, mounted on his sacred serpent Vasuki, and saying, in a voice familiar from a thousand television advertisements, in Sachin Tendulkar’s own voice:

‘My son, you were not born to fail: believe in me, today of all days.’

An hour later, at the Azad Maidan, Radha Kumar was heading to the crease; a sacred glove, Sachin’s own, bulged from his pocket. He stood at the crease, taking guard with his SG Sunny Tonny bat, genuine English willow.

Bad luck can take a million forms at the start of an innings. A feather touch on an outswinger; a French cut onto the stumps; a deflection off the pads into the hands of forward short leg. Survive till you reach 20, and you are settled in. When you cross 50, the selector’s brain will say: ‘This boy is special.’

Radha batted as many of them had not seen him bat in over a year. The bowlers pitched it short at him, and then they pitched it full. He cut; he drove.

When he reached 20, he took guard again. Subramanya, God of Cricket, it’s only thirty runs from here to safety.

A ball had rolled onto his pitch from another game. With the natural cricketing grace he had first revealed at the age of four, Radha, one hand on his bat, scooped up the ball just as a fielder came running for it, and hit it into his hands. ‘Thanks, man!’ shouted the other boy.

Waving at him, Radha again took guard.

The sun shone on the Municipal Building; a drum-beat rose from a distant part of the ground. Radha saw white sandbags piled up to his right and wondered why they had been placed there. A crow swooped low.

Deennawaz Shah had started his run-up.

•

Ninety seconds later –

Though the boy’s head is between his knees, and though thick hands cover his ears: the words still penetrate.

‘You hopped. A weight-transfer issue. After so many years of my coaching, you did it again. On Selection Day.’

Radha opened his eyes and saw Tommy Sir standing over him. He was back in the tent at the far end of the maidan.

His brother, Manju, was now taking guard at the wicket.

‘I practised for months, Tommy Sir. Even in the rains. I stood in the nets every day from seven thirty to eleven o’clock and from three to five thirty.’

It was all over now. Deennawaz Shah had smelled out Radha’s weakness: his first ball had pitched short, and jagged back into the batsman. It hit Radha on the right thigh pad and fell on his foot, and as he watched through the corner of his eye it found its way through his prayers and fifteen years of early mornings and late evenings at the nets. Mohan Kumar’s first son saw the bails fall.

‘Your brother listened to me, Radha. Manju always listened to me, but you …’

Radha opened his eyes.

‘My brother’s talent comes from God, old man. You had nothing to do with it.’

Extracting Sachin Tendulkar’s glove from his pocket, Radha held it high in the air. Had everyone seen it? Good. He tried to rip it with his hands — then he tore at it with his teeth, and spat it out to the ground.

Tommy Sir stared at the departing boy.

Tommy Sir always has a short speech for when it is over: the speech he delivers when there is no further hope of selection. When the kid is angry, when he wants to scream at his own mentor: Why did you make me play cricket, old man? At such a moment, hand on the boy’s shoulder, Tommy Sir will respond: We had no choice, son. But if you have learnt how to give this absurd game everything, you will have learnt how to do the same in business or medicine or anything else, and you will be a king in that life.

But this Radha — look at him go, look at him go — what could you tell a creature like this? Finding his throat dry, he drank half a bottle of Bisleri, gargled the last of the water, and discharged it into the red mud.

Some boys fall.

•

In a teashop near Azad Maidan — low ceiling — Radha sat with his palms over his face, and sweat running down his forehead onto his nose. When he opened his eyes, a man had materialized at the table in front of his, silver polyester shirt, big paunch, hennaed hair, and parted, panting lips. Radha observed the man’s paunch, which jiggled constantly, as if it were a battery-operated toy. He gaped at that tummy, until its owner, leaning forward, whispered:

‘Are you a sportsman, son? A sportsman?’

Four small fans turned on simultaneously: hot air hit everyone in the restaurant.

Radha lifted his eyes from the paunch, which continued to jiggle on its own behind the silver shirt, to the man’s face, anxious and avid beneath his red hair.

‘You look tired, son. You played hard, no?’

The man held up his teacup, whose sides were coated with thick brown liquid.

‘Want a taste of my tea? My nice tea?’ With a grimace, he reached over his paunch, and placed his cup on Radha’s table, then nudged it forward with a finger.

Tears filled Radha’s eyes. He bit his fingernails as he watched the cup of tea being nudged closer and closer to him.

Leaning against the wall, an old waiter sucked his cheeks and scraped at the peeling plaster with his left foot. One by one, three more barefoot waiters joined him to watch the fun.

‘Don’t worry about fat uncle here,’ said the waiter who was scratching the wall with a foot. ‘He’s harmless. Uncle, stop giving your tea to young boys.’

‘ Why can’t the sportsman have some of my chai?’ the fat man whined. ‘Such a nice thing to have, chai.’

Banging his fist on the table, spilling the tea, Radha said something to the fat man. His paunch no longer jiggled. And the waiters told the crazy adolescent to get out at once.

•

Small green typewriters hammered all along the edges of Azad Maidan: men with thick glasses struck the keys, filling out legal forms for their clients. Smoking a beedi, an old man spread himself on the footpath behind a painted sign.

PALM / FACE READING

ON THE SPOT SOLUTIONS

FOR ANY 5 LIFE PROBLEMS: Rs 150

FOR FULL LIFE PROBLEMS: Rs 500

‘Five of your problems solved for seventy-five rupees.’ He squinted at Radha, who was inspecting the sign. ‘I like your eyes, son.’

Radha stepped back. You too? He looked at the grinning old palmist. You too?

In the slums along the edge of the maidan, aluminium pots were on the boil. It was lunch hour. At the triangular wedge of grass at the end of the park, Radha saw red flags tucked into the fencing. Something behind the trees blared:

‘Kohinoor Mills. Swan Mills. Sreeram Mills. India United Mills Number One. Where is our compensation, where is our justice, where is our share in Mumbai?’

Radha ran. Past the clattering typewriters. Past the men smashing wood. Back to Azad Maidan, where Manju was showing off with the bat for the selectors.